5 Realistic Lessons in Radical Consumption From No Impact Man

In the film No Impact Man, Colin Beavan and his family pledge to abandon their high-consumption New York City lifestyle, instead devising radical ways to reduce consumption and waste. He sends the important message that most Americans could go on an energy and water diet—we do consume five times more energy than the average global citizen. In the film, though, Beavan's diet seems more like starvation. At the end of the odyssey, the protagonist realizes that true progress is "not about using as little as we can possibly use; it's about getting what I need in a sustainable way." While Beavan clearly has benevolent intentions, many of the steps he takes are misguided. Among environmentalists, a certain blend of sanctimony and ignorance can give rise to the idea that convenience equals consumption—if it's easy, it must be wasteful. Here's how to balance the radical with the realistic.

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Consumption Misconception No. 1: By Candle's Light

About six months into the impact-reduction experiment, Beavan cuts the electricity in his home, having the family navigate the night by candlelight. Everyone stumbles in darkness, searching for matches, and scenes of the apartment ablaze with candles resemble a church altar at Mass. PM interviewed No Impact Man's co-director Justin Schein at the film's Brooklyn premiere, but Schein was unable to provide an estimate of the number of matches and candles consumed in the name of conservation.

Unlike candles, compact fluorescent bulbs require no matches or wax (whether made from bees or petroleum) and they don't pollute indoor air with smoke. CFLs also sip power--consuming 75 to 80 percent less energy than comparable incandescent bulbs. To put the energy consumption of a CFL in context, consider these numbers from the Long Island Power Authority: Based on 5 hours of use per day at a rate of $0.198 per kilowatt-hour (kwh), a14-watt CFL (equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent) costs $5.06 per year. Five bucks doesn't buy many candles--certainly not enough to last the 7500 hours in an average CFL's life span. Besides, as Beavan's wife Michelle suggests, candles aren't an adequate substitute for electric bulbs--at the film's conclusion, she says one of the things she's looking forward to most is reading to their daughter under "ample illumination."

Consumption Misconception No. 2: Take the Stairs

Beavan mounts 24 flights of stairs to conduct a radio interview with WNYC's Brian Lehrer. Likewise, Beavan takes the stairs, not the elevator, to get to his NYC apartment.

Calculating how much an elevator really consumes depends on factors ranging from building height to the type of the elevator's drive system and even to the number of people onboard. After crunching some numbers for Slate, elevator manufacturer ThyssenKrupp determined that several typical buildings' daily elevator consumption, when averaged among all tenants, came to about 0.3 kwh per tenant, per day. That's actually a fair amount of energy--the 14-watt CFL mentioned above would burn for 21.4 hours before hitting the 0.3 kwh mark. But the elevator doesn't stop consuming if everyone starts walking up the stairs.

ThyssenKrupp representative Sasha Bailey says elevators post the worst efficiency numbers when they remain idle, because the motor and lights still run. The company recently announced plans to include motor-efficiency-controlling technology in new elevators, promising a potential savings of 20 to 35 percent over current models.

Consumption Misconception No. 3: Kill the Fridge

Doing away with the family refrigerator leads to one of No Impact Man's most memorable scenes, in which Beavan's supportive wife "mooches" ice from a neighbor's functioning freezer to refill a Coleman cooler in their apartment-turned-campsite. "I kinda don't get it," Beavan's wife, Michelle Conlin, says. "There's a reason people have refrigerators." The camera cuts to the daughter, refilling the open cooler by dropping cubes in one at a time. There's some cognitive dissonance here--any icemaking operation relies upon some sort of fuel-driven refrigeration, a process that has become increasingly efficient in recent years.

But let's assume Beavan is onto something, and everybody in his building converts to the ice and cooler method. Daniel Hirsch, president of commercial equipment distributor iceandwine.com, figures a 300-pound communal ice machine would serve 30 apartments a day with 10 pounds, or a bag and a half, of ice--enough to line a cooler and leave room for food. Consuming 6 kwh per 100 pounds of ice, the machine's full output would tally 6570 kwh per year. Split among 30 apartments, that's 219 kwh annually. Hirsch says health departments typically require a dispenser, which collects prepared ice to keep users' access hands-free, and that adds another 150 or so kwh to the operation, or about 5 kwh per household.

In comparison, the strongest Energy Star-qualified refrigerators consume between 300 and 400 kwh per year--more power, sure, but minus the daily chore of emptying, draining and refilling the cooler.

Consumption Misconception No.4: Stomp the Laundry

Using a borax-based cleaning solution and a clothes-washing method he found online, the family gathers in the tub to stomp laundry in ankle-deep cold water. "It's like making wine," Beavan says. But new appliances' efficiency--not to mention, efficacy--trump the tub-stomp method for low-impact laundry. Co-director Schein pointed out that the Beavan's efforts at water conservation did yield measurable reductions in water use, which is something most American households could take steps to streamline.

Energy Star-qualified clothes washers in the U.S. offer numbers most conscientious consumers could live with. The water consumed in several Frigidaire machines can get as low as 12 to 13 gallons per load. That looks to be about as much water as the Beavans had in the bottom of their tub. An added bonus: When using a washing machine, with a low-energy cost of 100 to 200 kwh per year, you don't even have to kick the dirt out of the clothes.

Consumption Misconception No. 5: Cut Out Coffee

In an attempt to eat food grown only within the New York region, Beavan cuts off his wife's coffee habit. Locavores concerned with foodstuffs' global footprint have plenty of evidence to decree most coffee sources to be off-limits. For this one, PM has no snappy alternative recommendation. But know this: coffee was present when the framers of the Constitution drafted the set of laws that would guide the course of this country. If we're ever going to develop a viable alternative fuel to compete with the bounty of energy stored in every lump of coal or barrel of oil--and arrive at the systemic change Beavan realizes will ultimately be necessary--you better believe the engineers that come up with it will have the pots of coffee brewing. Seems like a worthwhile reason to fill it to the brim.